Unshrunk and Beyond—Important Lessons/Bigger Questions
It's hard to be an activist when you’re concerned you are permanently defective and sedated with a cocktail of mind-numbing psych drugs.
The Tragedy of Morton the Sixth
Starting out with what were called “nervous breakdowns,” my father was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and incarcerated in the state mental hospital for the last twenty years of his life.
Using Lived Experience to Challenge Systemic Prescriber Inexperience of Antidepressant Withdrawal
Carla Delgado joins us to discuss her experience of antidepressant withdrawal and the hurdles created by dealing with a system that is largely ignorant of withdrawal and tapering.
Where Psychedelics Meet Madness: Intersections, Lessons and a Call for Transformative Research Agendas
If I had been supported to integrate my altered-state experiences 36 years ago, how much suffering could have been alleviated?
An Attorney Goes Public—My Experience of Misdiagnosis, Damaging Drugs, and Lack of Informed Consent
Without complete transparency, consent cannot be considered truly informed. While silence may feel safe, it keeps us immobilized.
On Alienation and the Chimeric Promise of Neuro-Identitarianism
As provision of basic needs continues to atrophy, resistance increasingly takes an individualised, myopic form.
On Psychological Abuse: How The System Twisted My Pleas For Help
I once heard a fellow survivor describe narcissistic abuse as a “rape of the soul,” and that is exactly how it felt for me.
The Mental Health Crisis We’re Not Naming
Despite the profoundly social and political nature of distress, the dominant response continues to individualize the problem.
Economists Conclude Reimbursing Tapering Strips Could Save Billions
Economists conclude Dutch government could save billions by reimbursing tapering strips to help patients safely discontinue psychiatric drugs.
Surviving Psychiatry’s ‘Help’
I can never visit a zoo again after my experience in the acute ward. I could never watch an animal pace back and forth.
Mercy, Magic, and the Medical Humanities: An Interview with Jussi Valtonen
Novelist and neuropsychologist Jussi Valtonen explains how close reading and creative writing can sharpen clinical attention, deepen perspective-taking, and help clinicians notice the language they use to describe patients.
Beyond Medication: What England’s Experience Can Teach Us About Psychosis Care
For over twenty years, NICE in England has recommended that people experiencing psychosis should be offered psychological therapy.
Approving a Drug for Children and Adolescents That Is More Likely to Induce Suicidality...
The approval is an example of what can go wrong in "evidence-based" psychiatry due to conflicts of interest and placing guild interests before patient safety.
Reconstructing 20+ Years of Psychiatric Treatment Through Medical Records
Seeing it laid out on paper felt like discovering an inventory of damage. It was an astonishing amount of intervention for someone who kept getting worse.
Anthropology, Arctic Iceland and Antidepressant Withdrawal: A Conversation With Fiona Frenzen
Fiona Frenzen joins us to talk of her experiences of healing from antidepressant withdrawal and how moving to Iceland had a powerful effect on her health and wellbeing.
Despite What You’ve Heard, “Schizophrenia” Is Not “80% Heritable”
Schizophrenia genetics researchers begin with false assumptions and then present and interpret data in ways that confirm these strong beliefs.
Study Finds the Majority of Increases in Symptoms During Antidepressant Tapering are Related to...
Past research has framed symptom increases during tapering and discontinuation of psychotropic drugs as a relapse of an underlying “illness.” A new preprint article...
On My Way to Norway with Julia Greenberg and Dory Previn
Dory’s eloquent reflections on her relationship with the voices she heard anticipated the burgeoning Hearing Voices and Mad Pride movements.
Open Dialogue Studies Highlight Collaboration, Clinician Support, and Stable Costs
This week Mad in America examines three studies related to the Open Dialogue approach in mental healthcare. Open Dialogue is a mental health approach...
When I Lost the Plot: A PTSD Implosion
I might have been in the grips of insanity, but I wasn’t unaware that something wasn’t right.
Meeting Life Unmedicated: Aging, Protracted Withdrawal and Healing—A Conversation With Marsha Zaritsky
Marsha Zaritsky is a licensed mental health therapist certified in Internal Family Systems. She joins us to explain how her experience with polypharmacy and psychiatric drug withdrawal has changed and informed how she practices.
Mad in Slovenia
Mad in Slovenia joins the Mad in the World Network
Your Vagus Nerve Is Not in Control: The Problem with Polyvagal Theory
In addition to being scientifically incorrect, there’s no reliable evidence that PVT works to relieve people of their symptoms or distress.
Psychiatry’s Attack Dog Is at It Again
Robert Whitaker responds to Awais Aftab's inaccurate smear campaign toward Mad in America and other critics.
Autism and Psychiatry: A Dangerous Mix
I am still trying to recover from all the damage psychiatry did to me and I am seeking therapies that work, with mixed results.
